Alpha, I have only recently found your work, and it speaks to something deep within me. Thank-you for sharing your thoughts, your process, your ideas, and your experience. The world needs this, I need this, and I am grateful to you.
I love this idea. Christopher Alexander's books played a large and unexpected role in guiding me towards work on the land. I think the pattern language concept suits water cycle restoration wonderfully.
One of my favorite patterns from CA is #208, "Gradual Stiffening", which details that structures should not be built to an exact plan using discrete parts, but rather they should be assembled like a basket, each action of construction responding to the last and forming a structure that is a cohesive, indivisible whole from the very beginning. By beginning the process of construction with flexibility, and gradually building towards structural soundness, a building can be deeply fine-tuned to its place and the needs of its occupants.
I think that a water cycle pattern language could use similar "philosophical" patterns. The practice of low-tech process-based stream restoration, a la Bill Zeedyk, reminds me very much of "gradual stiffening". To borrow the title of one of Bill's books, you could have a pattern called "Let the water do the work", which emphasises close observation, native materials, small but additive interventions spread across time, and the leveraging of already occurring fluvial processes over aggressive interventions involving heavy equipment and earth moving, etc.
Yeah the group decks is cool! I have that deck. Maybe there is stuff in that deck that can relate to this. There is a social permaculture part of how we can organize to restore nature.
Another well written and informative article, but I'm struggling to understand exactly what a pattern language is. What differentiates a pattern language from simply a list of helpful concepts and practices?
The way Christopher Alexander conceived of the pattern language, the patterns would be arranged from larger to smaller. Each pattern would reference which larger pattern it is helping make more specific, and would also reference smaller patterns that help make it up. So that way we begin to distinguish levels of scale. It organizes the concepts into a larger structure....There is a metamap of how all the concepts are then interlinked... In addition in each pattern, Christopher Alexander suggested we write also what the problem is, and how the pattern solves that problem.
Alpha, I have only recently found your work, and it speaks to something deep within me. Thank-you for sharing your thoughts, your process, your ideas, and your experience. The world needs this, I need this, and I am grateful to you.
Hi Luc, thanks for your message! Appreciate it.
I love this idea. Christopher Alexander's books played a large and unexpected role in guiding me towards work on the land. I think the pattern language concept suits water cycle restoration wonderfully.
One of my favorite patterns from CA is #208, "Gradual Stiffening", which details that structures should not be built to an exact plan using discrete parts, but rather they should be assembled like a basket, each action of construction responding to the last and forming a structure that is a cohesive, indivisible whole from the very beginning. By beginning the process of construction with flexibility, and gradually building towards structural soundness, a building can be deeply fine-tuned to its place and the needs of its occupants.
I think that a water cycle pattern language could use similar "philosophical" patterns. The practice of low-tech process-based stream restoration, a la Bill Zeedyk, reminds me very much of "gradual stiffening". To borrow the title of one of Bill's books, you could have a pattern called "Let the water do the work", which emphasises close observation, native materials, small but additive interventions spread across time, and the leveraging of already occurring fluvial processes over aggressive interventions involving heavy equipment and earth moving, etc.
yes restoring water is hard to do by breaking into discrete parts, so some kind of approach related to gradual stiffening sounds good.
This is a great IDEA!
I hope that the Group Works Deck was part of the inspiration.
Yeah the group decks is cool! I have that deck. Maybe there is stuff in that deck that can relate to this. There is a social permaculture part of how we can organize to restore nature.
It's a great idea and I am looking forward to the end result. I would appreciate reference to scientific evidence of the various patterns.
Yes we can reference scientific papers and principles in the pattern language
Another well written and informative article, but I'm struggling to understand exactly what a pattern language is. What differentiates a pattern language from simply a list of helpful concepts and practices?
Here is an article on pattern language showing how each pattern is made of sub-patterns https://nl.longpressed.com/p/speaking-the-pattern-language
Thank you!
The way Christopher Alexander conceived of the pattern language, the patterns would be arranged from larger to smaller. Each pattern would reference which larger pattern it is helping make more specific, and would also reference smaller patterns that help make it up. So that way we begin to distinguish levels of scale. It organizes the concepts into a larger structure....There is a metamap of how all the concepts are then interlinked... In addition in each pattern, Christopher Alexander suggested we write also what the problem is, and how the pattern solves that problem.